In a Hot-or-Cold State,
a Pleasant Surprise
Osceola Municipal Golf Course
Pensacola, Fla.
Greens fee: $29
Date: April 21, 2019
I always get nervous crossing the Florida state line, and not just because 4.8 million people here purposefully voted for Marco Rubio in the last election. Golf is prolific in Florida, but more than anywhere else in the South, its quality varies wildly. Some of the finest golf courses in the world are here; so are some of its biggest dumpster fires. And municipal golf is inherently hit or miss, so my expectations for Osceola Municipal in Pensacola were calibrated appropriately.
Still, I couldn’t quite snuff out a sense of optimism. The course traces its origins back to 1926, when the first nine opened smack-dab in the middle of architecture’s Golden Age; the second nine came after Bill Melhorn (who won 20 times on the PGA Tour, and whom Ben Hogan purportedly called “the best I ever saw from tee to green”) was hired as head pro in 1930. A renovation in 2011 overhauled the greens and added some bunkers, but the layout looks mostly like it did decades ago. And Osceola’s length — 6,402 yards from the tips — is almost the same as it was 60 years ago (a March 1957 article in the Pensacola News Journal put the course’s yardage at 6,354).
Osceola is anything but tired and old, though. It is challenging but not unfair; it is scruffy but not neglected. It carries all the character of a course that plays mostly like it did 80 years ago. I took that as an excuse to play with my hickories, but the scorecard yardage is deceptive: a small handful of short holes (two par 3s are 130 yards or less, and three par 4s are under 340 yards) mask the length of the rest of the course. You definitely can play hickories here, but you don’t have to do anything to make this course harder; it gives you all you can handle.
That secret comes out of the bag on the first tee, for an opening par-4 measuring 452 yards from the back. Bill Melhorn might have been able to move a golf ball 452 yards in two strokes with hickory shafts, but I’m no Bill Melhorn. To accommodate my equipment, I played the shorter front nine from the white tees (2,740 yards) and the back nine from the junior green tees (3,034 yards). But playing a little extra yardage wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world: the fairways were impressively firm, given how wet winter and spring have been. Osceola, at least, has finished shaking off that rain.
. . .
Osceola’s first pleasant surprise is the subtle but thoughtful second green.
After the lengthy but otherwise mundane first hole, No. 2 begins to let you in on Osceola’s best kept secret: its green complexes. We’re not talking Pinehurst No. 2 levels of creativity, but they’re quite good (for a greens fee that’s about $300 cheaper than Pinehurst, too). A nob on the front edge of the second green can either repel an approach that’s too short or send a shot careening off its back half. An uphill approach at No. 3 must navigate an entrance to a green flanked in front on both sides by deep bunkers; like several greens at Osceola, the firm conditions allow for a running shot, but the pinched entrance requires accuracy. At at No. 4, a mild left-to-right slope on the left side of the green allows the ball to feed down to a pin behind the sand trap guarding the right side; it’s not quite bold enough to qualify as a Redan, but it’s better than the monotony into which municipal golf frequently settles.
At the third hole, I was nearly killed. The right greenside bunker is troublingly close to the fifth tee, perhaps 50 yards; and as I walked up to try to excavate my ball, an old man on the tee box badly sliced his ball straight at me (as straight as a slice gets, anyway). I dodged it by a couple of feet and managed a wave and an understanding smile, hoping to avoid the awkward “sorry I almost killed you” conversation. No luck dodging this, though. The old man came up, hat literally in hand, and explained that this was his first round of golf since spinal surgery. “How long ago was your surgery?” I asked. “Two weeks,” he said. Two weeks! Hard to believe full rotation hadn’t returned. I wished him well, said a prayer for the city’s insurance carrier, and waited for his group to leave so I could hack from the bunker in solitude.
The ninth hole’s fairway bunkers pinch the landing zone: the farther up you want to drive, the narrower your target becomes.
The front nine finishes with a bang at a short but terrific par-4 with three massive fairway bunkers cutting in from the left side of the fairway and running toward the green. The right half of the green is shielded by a large tree and guarded by a greenside bunker, so the fairway bunkers must be grappled with. Even if you navigate them, the green lies downhill from the bunkers, and a slope behind the green is ready to send away any shots that come in too hard (trust me), so even the short approach must be handled delicately. To my eye, it’s the most noticeable change that the course underwent during the 2011 renovation. I’m generally pretty sensitive to 21st-century renovations of Golden Age architecture, but this hole is undoubtedly an upgrade from the original.
For a moment, I entertained the thought of calling it quits after nine. The course was surprisingly crowded for midday on Easter Sunday (closer to frustratingly crowded than pleasantly surprising), and the fivesome of kids in front of me weren’t exactly playing ready golf. Thankfully, they lost interest at the turn, so I made haste for the back nine.
But then I caught up with the foursome that had nearly killed me 90 minutes prior. They waved me through from the 11th fairway. My top priority was not returning the assassination attempt from the front nine. I took a little off my driver for the sake of control, and after the shot rolled up to theirs, I hit a majestic baby fade onto the green with my bulldog (never mind that I was trying to hit a draw). Two putts later, the course was wide open in front of me. “Nice par!” said the man whose slice nearly embedded itself in my head on No. 3. I nodded as if I’m good for more than two or three of them per round. I’m sure Sunday at the Masters comes with some discomfort, but there is no pressure like the anxiety of a single playing through a foursome.
The large sand trap guarding the 17th green protects against all but the most perfectly placed of tee shots on the extreme left of the fairway.
The back nine is Osceola is a little more mundane than the front, but it finishes strong. The best of its holes is the 15th, a sturdy par-5 (547 yards from the back, 479 yards from the hickory-friendly greens), which requires a tee shot in the fairway for any chance at birdie. The fairway slopes down hard toward a blind green; rolling the ball on is definitely the better play, and in firm conditions, a solid drive probably makes that possible in two (not that I would know, since I pulled my tee shot into some trees). The green slopes down still further behind and right, so trying to fly your approach invites heaps of trouble. Trust the ground. It is your friend. Beware any groups behind you, though; without visibility from the fairway, this green is another good spot to get murdered.
After two solid par-4s at No. 16 and No. 17, the demanding 18th — a par-5 measuring more than 500 yards from all but the forward tees — is a brutal finishing hole. It doglegs right, pinching the tee shot’s landing area between a smattering of fairway bunkers. The front of the green is similarly pinched between traps guarding both sides of its entrance, making a running approach a hairy proposition. Both the length of the approach and the need to carry the bunkers militate against trying to get on in two. It’s a fitting finish: tough, but fair and thoughtful, like the rest of the course.
Osceola isn’t the prettiest course in the Florida Panhandle, but of the half-dozen or so that I’ve played in the Pensacola area, Osceola is definitely the leader in the clubhouse, and for a fraction of the typical greens fee. Its conditioning is more than adequate, and its superintendent obviously has no objection to letting it get firm and fast (and God bless him for it). Its layout gets a little ho-hum for a stretch on the back nine, but people accuse Pebble Beach of the same thing for God’s sake. It’s also the only course I’ve played in this area that feels real, and not like it was rolled off a factory floor to be stuck in some housing community (which most of them basically were). I’ll be back — with my gamers next time.